


Strike the Earth

by draconicsockpuppet



Category: Dwarf Fortress, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dragons, Evil Biome, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Slice of Life, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27204376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draconicsockpuppet/pseuds/draconicsockpuppet
Summary: Wei Wuxian and the Wen remnants discover the peculiarities of the Burial Mounds, and the costs and joys of living on a mountain that's constantly trying to kill you and every other living creature above its surface.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Strike the Earth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tuesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/gifts).



The first sign that the Burial Mounds were terrifying came when it rained: a wet splatter of blood falling from the sky, which covered the trees and the ground and everything in sight until the quiet forest looked like the site of a recent massacre. Everyone ran into the caves, but not before being drenched, and a murmur of complaint ran through the caverns as they cleaned the sticky drying blood off themselves.

Wei Wuxian only shrugged. He knew from experience that when there was nothing else to eat, drinking the blood rain would keep you alive. Worse things could happen.

The second sign that the Burial Mounds were terrifying came as a herd of deer: skeletal deer, wandering through the forest on clattering hooves, ready to throw themselves onto the humans and attempt to rend mortal flesh from bone with their age-stained rotting teeth. At least they were slow.

"How do the bones stay together?" Wen Qing whispered to Wei Wuxian as they peered out from the safety of the cave.

"This mountain is brimming with resentful energy." Wei Wuxian lifted Chenqing to his lips. "But it's not difficult to redirect them." And he began to play.

At the first sound of the flute, the deer wandered off again—luckily, before they were able to trample the newly-planted radishes.

"We should put up fencing," Wen Qing decided, and she went to tell the others.

Wei Wuxian spun Chenqing absently as he looked into the sky. The deer were easy to distract. Skeletal vultures, on the other hand… He shuddered a little at the memory of those first few fraught days trapped here, still injured with only the tortoise sword to protect him from the many dangers.

Still, a hastily erected wooden wall kept walking skeletons away, at least, and everyone learned to keep an eye on the sky as they went about their days. Slowly, the little clearing around the cave became a field, planted with neat rows of vegetables.

Jiang Cheng visited and argued and left, then returned and fought with Wei Wuxian in the foothills and left again, all without ever encountering the undead wandering the mountain. Wei Wuxian shook his head as he wrapped the wound in his side with freshly-boiled cloth. Some people had all the luck.

He ran into Lan Zhan, too, during his next trip down the mountain. For someone obviously unused to children, he was remarkably gentle and permissive with A-Yuan. Unfortunately, their nice meal together was cut short by an alert from the Burial Mounds.

"Something's come out of the caves," Fourth Uncle gasped once Wei Wuxian had blown away the resentful tendrils attacking the settlement.

"I set a seal!" Wei Wuxian frowned. "Who touched it?"

"No one. It's—"

"A-Ning!"

Wei Wuxian went to Wen Qing's call. Wen Ning was easy enough to subdue, but who had removed the seal?

"No one!" Wen Qing said. "He destroyed all the seals in the caves, and all the resentment in the blood pool came out."

When Wei Wuxian had lived here for three long months by himself, the Burial Mounds had been almost welcoming. The yin iron he carried ensured his safety, and as he learned to use it he became almost a part of the Burial Mounds. Yet it had become clear during the Wen clan's residence that the mountain still hated the living. Wei Wuxian was an exception to its lust for destruction, not the rule—and now Wen Ning suffered for it.

Wen Ning screamed out another pulse of resentment and fled, with Wei Wuxian and Lan Zhan following. As Lan Zhan countered the energies with the sweet sound of Wangji's strings, Wei Wuxian covered Wen Ning with talismans again and cast a final seal.

It worked. Lan Zhan's music was the final ingredient necessary to free a ghost puppet from possession. As Wen Qing ran to her brother, Wei Wuxian breathed a deep sigh of relief.

Everything would be okay. He would _make_ it okay.

Lan Zhan seemed less sure of Wei Wuxian's ability to control the yin tiger seal, but that was fine. Wei Wuxian knew his own capabilities, and he knew Lan sect's many rules. That Lan Zhan hadn't attacked him yet was a gift in itself.

It _was_ a pity that they were all out of tea, though.

Over the next month, the remnants of the Wen clan grew closer together, finally accepting Wei Wuxian as one of them instead of as some sort of standoffish young master who was too good to talk to them. Wei Wuxian didn't get why they'd thought that in the first place—wasn't it obvious he'd talk with anyone? But people had to understand it for themselves. The food stores dwindled, but at least radishes grew quickly.

Once the first crop was ready to sell, Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning took a trip down into Yiling, but between the knock-off con artists, the increasingly ridiculous rumor mill, and Jiang Cheng standing halfway down the street glowering at Wei Wuxian the whole time, it hardly seemed worth it.

"What are you doing here?" Wei Wuxian said when he finally got up and went over to see what Jiang Cheng wanted.

"I could ask you the same thing!"

Wei Wuxian gestured with his arms at Wen Ning and the giant sack he'd had to carry down the mountain all by himself. "Selling radishes, of course."

"Of course." Jiang Cheng shook his head. "You really are a piece of work."

"What else were we supposed to do?"

"Throw your family and your responsibilities away to go cultivate on a mountain made of _death_ and a thousand years of pent-up resentful energy, apparently!" Jiang Cheng threw a little qiankun pouch at him, turned, and stomped off. Wei Wuxian sighed, then froze as he opened the pouch. Inside was a massive pile of silver taels.

He returned to Wen Ning, still resolutely hawking their radishes to uninterested passersby, and tapped him on the shoulder. "You can stop."

"I haven't made enough money to buy what's on jiejie's shopping list, young master."

Wei Wuxian jangled the qiankun pouch. "We have money. Come on, let's go."

On the way out of Yiling they ran into a man in Jin sect gold and white speaking to a crowd. "Sect Leader Jin will pay five hundred taels of silver for information leading to the capture of Wei Wuxian and the recovery of his piece of yin metal."

Five hundred taels? Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning exchanged a look as the crowd murmured and gasped; then they tipped their hats down over their faces and scurried off.

"Why is he willing to pay so much for you?" Wen Ning asked when they were safely away.

Wei Wuxian patted the pouch at his side. "He wants power." Had Jin Guangshan become a devotee of demonic cultivation? Surely not! …Still, it was concerning.

When they'd returned to their mountain with their purchases, Wei Wuxian gave the pouch Jiang Cheng had thrown at him to Wen Qing to tally. Including what they'd spent, the pouch contained a full year's salary for a head disciple. And at the bottom was a note, written in shijie's handwriting.

_Please stay safe._

Wei Wuxian took the little strip of paper and hid it in his sleeve while Wen Qing pretended not to notice.

"I won't send you down the mountain with radishes any more," Wen Qing said as they sat around the table and admired the hefty pile of silver. "We should try preserving them instead."

Wei Wuxian shuddered a little. He had a restless heart and hated having to stay so close to the mountain, but no one else could subdue the resentful energy that permeated the Burial Mounds. It was irresponsible to visit town so often while there were swarms of skeletal beasts lurking outside.

"Don't worry," Wen Qing continued, her eyes soft. "I'll come up with something else for you to do."

* * *

'Something else' was exploring the caverns. Past the blood pool, the tunnel curved and went deep, a narrow ramp spiraling into darkness. Wei Wuxian made himself a little paper lantern and lit it with an array so that it perpetually glowed red, the brightest object in the dull grey haze of the Burial Mounds. Granny packed him a lunch, with A-Yuan's help, and he stashed that in his qiankun pouch, right next to the yin tiger seal.

Down, down, down he descended, until the little curled-in tunnel opened up into a little stone cavern blocked off by a cave-in. Wei Wuxian looked around—the ceiling seemed secure, so perhaps it would be simple to clear the rockfall and see what was on the other side—and then went to fetch Wen Ning.

"Are you sure about this, young master?"

"It'll be fine." Wei Wuxian pointed with the tasseled end of Chenqing. "Go on, you don't need to clear them all. Just enough to keep going."

Wen Ning nodded and set to work with a doubtful expression. Wei Wuxian sat and ate his lunch while Wen Ning worked: radish congee again, with slivers of dried ham. He had no idea how Wen Qing managed to eke out their meagre supply of rice as far as she had.

He ignored the little shakes the bits of ham made as they slid down his throat. They were almost out of meat. It would probably be fine. None of the vegetables had tried to kill them yet.

"I have it, young master," Wen Ning called out, and Wei Wuxian put the lid back on the box of congee and went to look.

The other side was covered with moss and tiny mushrooms. He couldn't tell by the light what color the vegetation was; everything was red in the lantern's light. But it was possibly food. Despite Wen Ning's protests, Wei Wuxian bent and plucked a strand of moss and put it in his mouth.

Hmm. Flavorful, probably not poisonous. (If it was, he had an array for that too.) He tried a tiny mushroom next.

"Young master!"

Wei Wuxian stood. "Promising! Let's go."

Wen Ning sighed, but followed him as he passed into a string of little caves, like beads on a string, all of them teeming with fungi and mosses. Larger mushrooms grew, too; little black ones covered with dimples, and large fleshy caps that were dark but not quite so dark as the others; Wei Wuxian wondered absently what their true color was. There were bushes covered in grey leaves, and vines that yielded sweet beans in pods—

"Young master, _please_ stop putting everything in your mouth."

Wei Wuxian spat out a bit of dimpled mushroom. "That one's not edible. But the beans will be when they're cooked, and the big fleshy ones we can eat raw." He took a leaf off one of the grey bushes and chewed it thoughtfully. "This would be good as spice in congee, or maybe as tea."

"What about that one?" Wen Ning pointed to a few stalks of—grass? And it was heavy with ears of what looked like cereal—

Wei Wuxian scrambled over and checked: yes, little hard dry seeds, with little tails on the ends.

"We might not run out of grain after all," he muttered, and broke off all but two of the stalks; it was important to leave _some_ to replenish the supply. He stuffed them into his pouch with samples of the others, the beans and the leaves and a big fleshy mushroom cap and even two of the little dimpled black ones, just in case they were useful for medicine.

"It's good, then?" Wen Ning asked with a frown.

"A great success." Wei Wuxian clasped his shoulder. "You did well."

Wen Ning's perpetually worried expression bloomed into a shy smile. "Thank you, young master."

* * *

They were just in time for dinner. Wei Wuxian repeated his taste test in front of Wen Qing and the others. The little black mushrooms were actually a deep indigo blue, and not just on the surface; the flesh stained A-Yuan's fingers when he mashed one, and Granny's too when she took it away. From the looks everyone was giving him, Wei Wuxian's teeth were stained too.

"We have grain," Wen Qing said, stunned. "We can _grow_ grain, here on the Burial Mounds."

Fourth Uncle picked up a piece of the big fleshy cap—Wei Wuxian had cut it up so everyone could give it a try—and gingerly chewed it. Then he furrowed his brow. Everyone leaned in a little; was that good or bad?

"A little like chicken-leg mushrooms," he said after he swallowed. "Good."

A murmur ran around the room, and others reached out to taste as well. Wei Wuxian smiled when the platter was empty. "I think it's safe to say we can solve our food problems by going deeper."

Wen Qing nodded. "You can make more lanterns?"

"Sure!"

"We'll need more paper," Wen Qing decided, and began to give directions to the others. Wei Wuxian ignored them all in favor of picking up A-Yuan.

"Apologies, but I have a little mushroom to plant," he said, and retreated to the blood pool cave with his tiny accomplice.

* * *

The next day Wei Wuxian descended into the caverns again, taking Fourth Uncle and Wen Ning with him. The tunnel was the same until they reached the little cavern with the cave-in; there, mushrooms and mosses had already begun to grow over scattered patches of dried mud.

"Mushrooms reproduce via spores," Fourth Uncle explained. "There must be water down there somewhere."

Water that wasn't muddy or bloody would be a vast improvement over their current supply. Wei Wuxian nodded and led the way through the opening into the string of little overgrown caves.

Fourth Uncle had farmed for decades, and knew what he was looking for. He knelt on the thick vegetation and began to check it for—well, whatever it was farmers did. He plucked a strand of a dark, curly reed, split it with one weathered thumbnail, then stuck it in his mouth and chewed.

Wei Wuxian looked at Wen Ning, who shrugged helplessly; he obviously didn't know either.

"We can make cloth and paper out of this," Fourth Uncle declared as he inspected his chewed-up reed.

"That's useful." Wei Wuxian left Wen Ning holding the lantern and went to the other side of the cavern, where another passage led further in—to what, no one yet knew. He drew the light array with his finger and cast it into the darkness; the words burst into illumination before sputtering out and dying.

More tunnel, and spider webs.

"I'd like to go back up," Fourth Uncle said, his arms filled with a pile of plants. "I think we may be able to grow some of these up in the surface caves."

"Good." Wei Wuxian looked back at the dark mouth of the tunnel leading on. They'd probably want to start some fields down here too, though, once there was enough light… just in case.

So far, the surface was far more dangerous.

* * *

"We need paper for talismans too much to make more than a few lanterns out of our current supply," Wen Qing said, "but I made paint out of those dimpled mushrooms you brought. Can you draw permanent arrays for light instead?"

"Certainly, until the moss grows over them," Wei Wuxian told her.

She nodded slowly. "Maybe we'll have more paper by then."

"It's worth a try." Wei Wuxian picked up the little pot of paint and the ink-brush he'd seen her using the least; old and ratty, but it would do. He requested another box of congee from Zao-jie at the fire for lunch; was that rice or the new cave grain? It was greyer than usual, although that might be because of the little leaves floating in it, or the chunks of mushrooms.

"Xian-gege!" A-Yuan clung to his leg like a limpet and refused to let go.

Wei Wuxian knelt down to look at the little boy. "You can't come with me, Little Radish. It's too dangerous."

"I'm a mushroom!" A-Yuan said.

"Fine, fine, Little Mushroom." A-Yuan grinned, and Wei Wuxian sighed at him. "You still can't go down there yet. Wait for Xian-gege to make sure it's safe, okay?"

"Are there skeletons?" A-Yuan asked with wide eyes.

"Not so far, but there might be spiders, or other monsters. We don't know yet."

"There's skeletons here," A-Yuan informed him with hurt dignity. "A big bird made of bones tried to claw Granny's face off."

Oh. That must be why the makeshift door between the cave and the forest outside was closed, Zao-jie was at the fire, and Granny was in bed under a pile of blankets. Wei Wuxian looked up at the cracks that allowed sunlight in; all of them were covered with nets and wooden screens and talismans, and yes, everyone seemed more twitchy than usual.

Typical of Wen Qing! No one ever told him anything important around here. It was kind of her to try and spare his feelings, but people were getting hurt!

"Xian-gege will try and make the caverns safe so Little Mushroom and Granny can come down soon, all right?"

"Hurry," A-Yuan told him, very seriously.

* * *

"It's not like you could do anything about it after the fact," Wen Qing said, not even bothering to look up from her accounts.

"You still should have told me."

"It's more important that you finish surveying the caverns." Wen Qing finally lifted her eyes to meet his. "Once there's sufficient food and space, we'll all come down and block off the passage to the surface."

The threats on the surface were bad enough to risk spending the rest of their lives trapped in a dark hole in the ground? Wei Wuxian nodded in acceptance, but he resolved to go set more talismans around the outside of their current shelter before he went down into the deeps again.

* * *

Creating the light arrays became a quick rhythm: float into position, paint the array in indigo on the ceiling, move on with Wen Ning shuffling behind. Painted on stone, the array lit the tunnel like daylight, bringing out the colors in the rock. Wei Wuxian didn't know anything about minerals, but a vein of bright green running through deep grey was eyecatching no matter what it was called. And the fungi and mosses he'd noticed before were blue and white and lavender and green now, all melding together like water lilies on Dongting Lake.

There were spiderwebs in the tunnel just past the cave-in now, huge ones that covered the entire tunnel. Wei Wuxian looked at Wen Ning; the two shared a shrug, and then Wen Ning leaned out and tested the webbing with his hand.

"Sticky." Wen Ning drew his hand back, and the webbing collapsed over him like a net. A few moments later, a skittering sound echoed down the tunnel, growing louder and louder—

"Don't come near!" Wen Ning threw out his arm as Wei Wuxian ran to help, then bunched his shoulders and tore the webbing apart—just as a great black spider, larger than a horse, sprang out of the tunnel with its mandibles outstretched.

Wen Ning punched it in the forehead, right between the two largest eyes. His unnaturally strong follow-through cracked the chitinous shell and then the spider's head into a pulpy mass. The body trembled and then sank to the floor, rolling over with its eight thin legs cramping above.

After a few seconds of stillness, it trembled again and rose, surrounded by a nimbus of resentful energy, its brains still oozing out through the hole Wen Ning's fist had left.

"Oh, no," Wen Ning murmured as he tried and failed to free himself from the remnants of webbing.

"Oh, _yes_ ," Wei Wuxian said. He lifted Chenqing to his lips and began to play; the spider-corpse jerked and stood still.

"Make yourself useful," Wei Wuxian ordered, and then he gestured the spider-corpse back into the tunnel, following with caution as it cleared out the webs, one by one. Wen Ning came after him, still scraping off sticky clumps of webbing and spider brain on the tunnel walls.

They passed through the same strand of little caves, Wei Wuxian painting out the light array on the ceiling of every single one as Wen Ning watched the spider's animated corpse from the corner of his eye. Then they continued into new territory, the spider tearing down web after web as they advanced. Tiny skeletons stuck to the walls struggled endlessly, what looked like lizards and bats and birds with a few bedraggled black feathers and bits of skin still stuck to their bones. Down they went, cave after cave, and then the dead spider walked out into emptiness and fell. A wet 'thump' hit their ears six counts later: a long fall, then.

Wei Wuxian put his hand on the end of the rock and peered out. A massive rift opened up before them, the reddish light from the lantern reflecting back unevenly from jagged stone ceiling and jagged stone walls alike. From below came a reddish glow that had nothing to do with the lantern, and, distantly, the sound of water.

Wei Wuxian leaned against the side of the cavern and looked down. Oh, to have a flying sword right now!

"We can go back for rope," Wen Ning offered.

"They're counting on us," Wei Wuxian said. "We go on."

Wen Ning looked down the cliff, then nodded and leapt, using the wall to slow his fall. Wei Wuxian descended at a more sedate pace, with Chenqing at his lips guiding the resentful energy flowing around him, holding his own weight aloft with the strength of hatred and suffering the land had absorbed over these many generations. Around him, the caps and stalks of massive white and golden mushrooms towered, large enough to hollow out as a house.

Stone broke where Wen Ning had landed near the pulpy mess that had been their spider companion; bits of its crumpled legs still twitched and wiggled. There was moss and fungi everywhere here, a thick, bouncy carpet, and above them the massive mushrooms felt almost like a forest—an underground forest.

"Maybe we could use those as wood," Wen Ning said.

"There's certainly more life down here than there is on the surface." Wei Wuxian reached out; there was no resentful energy nearby. "We'll have to figure out how to get the others down safely, though."

"I had to learn to use a pick at Qiongqi Path," Wen Ning said. "I could carve a rough staircase down."

"Good!" Wei Wuxian grinned and spun Chenqing as he set off, Wen Ning following. Such a big cavern! The sound of rushing water grew louder and louder, and then red light caught on water and refracted: a massive waterfall fell before their eyes, splashing into an underground lake—and in the lake, there were fish!

"Are those dead too?" Wen Ning asked.

"Morbid," Wei Wuxian said as he checked. "No, they're living. Maybe even edible?" Then again, even fish bones had been dangerous on the surface. How far had they traveled, anyway?

"Young master!" Wen Ning pointed to a ripple in the water.

"Yes? What?" Wei Wuxian peered into the lake—it didn't look like there was anything there but an occasional silvery glint of fishscales.

"I thought I saw something," Wen Ning mumbled.

"Hm," Wei Wuxian said, and he continued walking. The water was clear and fresh—he dipped a hand in to taste—and the land seemed fertile in its own fungal way. "We could live here," he said at last, as they came to the cliffside by the waterfall, mist dampening their faces. "I think we could be happy here." And if there was a pang in his heart at the thought of never seeing shijie again, or Jiang Cheng, or Lan Zhan, as distant and immaculate as the snow-covered mountains—well, no one had to know.

_Splash._

"What was that?"

Wen Ning stared at him and then at the water. They both watched ripples spread. But how much of the disturbance was from the waterfall? Was that splash magnified by their own paranoia, or did something lurk within the waters?

Nothing.

Wei Wuxian turned his back to the waterfall and began to survey the rest of the cave: mushrooms, mushrooms, more mushrooms, and in the distance, a herd of some sort of large herbivore with stunted wings and antlers, grazing in the moss—

"Young master, look out!" Wen Ning tackled him just as ivory teeth as large as swords descended. Wei Wuxian turned and stared as he and Wen Ning staggered back, clinging to each other. A massive lizard had surfaced from the waters, its mouth roughly the size and shape of a grown man's coffin, lined with more and more of those terrible teeth snapping right for them—

"At least it isn't a dog."

"I could win a fight with a dog," Wen Ning said. "I don't know how to fight that."

"You don't have to," Wei Wuxian told him, and then he grabbed Wen Ning's hand and pulled him along as he fled from the lake towards the reddish glow up at the top of the hillside.

They ran up a slope, unimpeded by the spongy carpet of fungi and mosses, through thickets of mushrooms as tall as pines. The squat lizard followed after them for a dozen or so paces, then turned back with a powerful swish of its tail and slipped back into the water.

"I'd heard there are similar creatures called 'crocodiles' that live on the Yangtze River, but this one was so much larger!" Wei Wuxian turned back and looked at the trail its belly had left in the fungi: a furrow wider than some carts. It was definitely bigger than a horse. "Powerful swimmer, but can't run very fast, and can't climb… We can protect the others from that."

"A wall," Wen Ning said.

"Yes." Wei Wuxian looked back up the slope, towards the curious glow. "Come on, I want to know what's up there."

A tunnel on the cavern wall carried the river that fed that waterfall full of crocodiles; Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning stayed a few dozen paces away, just in case. The glow was coming from an oblong hole in the ground, some sort of tube ringed by obsidian. Red snakes crawled in and out of whatever the glowing stuff inside was, and as they neared, the air grew hotter and hotter.

"A volcano," Wei Wuxian whispered. That red glow was magma, molten rock, and he had _so many ideas_ for what to do with it.

"It's dangerous," Wen Ning said, and tugged at his sleeve. "Let's go back."

Lots of things were dangerous, like the ancient blade of yin iron that had kept him alive and allowed him to tame the strange deadly creatures here when he first came to the Burial Mounds. Wei Wuxian wasn't afraid of danger.

Still, they did have to go tell the others. As dangers went, a few big, murderous lizards that couldn't run very fast (and maybe a few more of those enormous spiders) seemed better neighbors than a constant parade of skeletal monstrosities. They could shelter in the string of little caves, block off the surface, and either he or Wen Ning could easily defend the opening between the tunnel and the great cavern from whatever creatures tried to climb in—

"Young master?"

Wei Wuxian blinked. "Yes, yes, I'm going."

They observed more animals roaming through the rift as they returned; small darkly-colored birds, reasonably-sized spiders, and little creatures that looked like a mass of wriggling fingers crawling along the cavern walls. There were larger creatures too: winged, antlered herbivores, and bats and moles and earthworms as unreasonably large as the crocodile or that spider that Wen Ning had killed had been. As wildlife went, the cave monsters would have been a good challenge for junior cultivators, but nothing like the dangers aboveground.

When Wei Wuxian told Wen Qing this, she quickly agreed. "We'll pack up and go down right away. A-Ning, start digging a stair or ramp down; we'll set up our camp in the small caves and start fortifying an area of the rift for farming."

"What about me?" Wei Wuxian said.

"You guard the rear," Wen Qing told him. "The talismans have held against the skeletal animals so far, but I'm not sure how long they'll last."

Wen Ning took a pick and went back down the tunnel immediately. Wei Wuxian slowly walked through the cave, idly spinning Chenqing, as the Wen clan bustled around him. They'd already packed, so by the time he reached the cave's mouth, the last of the bundles had been hefted and Fourth Uncle and Zao-jie were carrying Granny on her bed into the tunnel. All that was left was an intricate webbing of ropes and talismans.

Outside, the fields lay abandoned; a hoe still stuck up at a crooked angle where someone had dropped it before fleeing. On the wooden wall perched a half-rotted vulture, its eyes glowing red. It cocked its head and looked at Wei Wuxian.

He pulled a little paper man from his pocket and transferred into it. The vulture stayed still as the little paper man drifted nearer; he opened his eyes to see his own body slumped against the cave mouth, then jumped up on the vulture's back and prodded it to take flight.

The Burial Mounds from above were a dense thicket of dead branches, the result of trees grown from evil soil reaching towards a sun whose light they abhorred. Even the muddy water refused to reflect light. Then his eyes caught on a flash of white. Wei Wuxian prodded the vulture into descending and saw that it was Lan Zhan, wounded and resolute, wending his way along the path through the dark forest. The little paper man detached and jumped from the vulture's back just as Bichen neatly bisected another corrupted corpse—this one in Jin gold and white.

"Wei Ying!" Lan Zhan had never been much for emoting, but Wei Wuxian could hear a hint of relief in his tone—or was that his own feeling at seeing his old friend? No matter. He lifted one paper arm and waved, then led Lan Zhan up the path, avoiding the clumps of undead along the way. At the fence the little paper man jumped over and returned to his own slumped-over body, and Wei Wuxian lifted his head and went to let Lan Zhan in.

"Maiden Jiang has married Jin Zixuan," Lan Zhan said without preamble once they were safely inside the caves. Wei Wuxian nodded and led him past the bloody pool and down the tunnel. As they descended, Lan Zhan seemed—almost curious? "The resentment is much less strong here," he said at last as they entered the cave with the pile of rocks and the scattered patches of fungi.

"It's dark, and there are monsters, but there is at least plenty of food."

Lan Zhan looked back at the tunnel behind them, then up at the light array on the ceiling. "Do you intend to stay down here indefinitely?"

Wei Wuxian shrugged. "Probably, unless it becomes more dangerous than the surface."

Lan Zhan nodded, and they continued on.

Fourth Uncle and a number of the others were busy gathering mushrooms, and there was a tidy pile in the little cave the others had set the bedrolls in. Wei Wuxian was glad to see Granny sitting up and eating from a spoon that Wen Qing held for her. A big pot of porridge with mushrooms was simmering over the fire, and the sound of metal striking stone came from the far tunnel; Wen Ning must be hard at work digging out a ramp down to the cavern floor.

"Rich brother!" A-Yuan immediately attached himself to Lan Zhan's knee. "Did you bring me any gifts?" He raised his pinwheel proudly and shook it.

Lan Zhan shook his head, but his hand gently rested on A-Yuan's tousled hair.

"Hanguang-jun!" Wen Qing handed off Granny's bowl and spoon to Zao-jie and rose to greet their guest. "Welcome! I'm sorry but we don't have any tea to serve you."

Wei Wuxian held up a finger. "Do we have a teapot?"

Wen Qing gave him a look but nodded towards the fireside, where the little iron teapot steamed away.

Wei Wuxian handed a handful of leaves to Wen Ning to make tea. Wen Ning took one of their few chipped bowls and added a few of the greyish leaves to it, then poured in boiling water and let it steep for a few breaths. Then he poured for the others and finally himself, all seated in a little circle around a flattish boulder they could use as a table.

Wei Wuxian ignored Wen Qing's dubious expression as he took a taste and smiled. "Not bad!"

"Maiden Wen," Lan Zhan said when they'd finished their cups, ignoring the small child attached like a limpet to his arm. "What do you intend?"

"First, to live," Wen Qing said. "After that, I wish to pacify this land, as much as we are able. There are many spirits suffering to whom we might bring relief: the soldiers from the battle which created the Burial Mounds, the many unmarked corpses that were thrown in later to be devoured by evil beasts, their ghosts left to wander… There are so many dead here." She dropped her eyes. "Perhaps by doing so, our clan can make amends for our crimes."

"The other sects will never accept this," Lan Zhan said. "The stories they tell are despicable."

"I know that Wen Ruohan committed many atrocities." Wen Qing picked her words carefully, mindful of the child in their midst. "If Wen Ning and I give ourselves up to their judgment, perhaps they'll spare the others—"

"No," Lan Zhan said. "Not you. Jin sect tells many lies."

"Jin Guangshan wants the yin tiger seal," Wei Wuxian said. "I can't imagine anything good would come of giving it to him."

Lan Zhan looked at him, unblinking. "He has called for your death. Even now, cultivators approach the Burial Mounds to destroy you, and what remains of the Wen sect."

Wei Wuxian met his eyes as he thought through their options. Other than its proximity to Yiling, the Burial Mounds had much to recommend it as a hiding spot: remote, a place no one else would want, a place no one else _could_ live—

"We could die," he said suddenly. "Not in truth, but we could make it look like we'd died."

"No one can live on the Burial Mounds," Wen Qing said. "It would not be surprising if we were to perish here. You mean to block off the tunnel?"

"Cave it in up by the blood pool and no one will know the difference," Wei Wuxian said. "We can dig out if we have to."

"Wei Ying," Lan Zhan said softly.

"I'll go check on A-Ning and let the two of you talk," Wen Qing said.

The coward! Wei Wuxian pouted after her, but she resolutely ignored him as she left. Then he turned back. "Look, it isn't a bad plan."

Lan Zhan said nothing.

"It's a pretty good plan, actually!"

"Yes," Lan Zhan said at last.

"You agree, good!" Wei Wuxian grinned. "Will you help me? They're all busy here."

Lan Zhan nodded.

After handing off A-Yuan to Granny and Zao-jie, Wei Wuxian led Lan Zhan up the tunnel again, lantern in hand. The field looked abandoned already, but Wei Wuxian tore down the nets and talismans in the caves and did his best to make it look like they'd been _successfully_ attacked as Lan Zhan stood guard and killed the skeletal birds as they flew in. The extra corpses held a certain ambiance, and Wei Wuxian splashed blood from the blood pool around until it looked as though twenty people could easily have died there.

Then, they knocked down the wooden palisade together, leaving a gaping hole in the defenses that could easily admit a herd of skeletal deer. Wei Wuxian caught Lan Zhan looking at him when they were done and forced out a smile.

"It will be alright," he said. "Tell them we died. Tell them we're gone. Lead them up here; we'll block off the caverns. As far as the world is concerned, let the Wen clan end here, today."

"And young Madam Jin? Sect leader Jiang?"

"They'll survive," Wei Wuxian said, though his heart hurt to think of it. "If I 'die' here, I'll bring no more trouble to Jiang sect, or to shijie. That will have to be good enough."

Lan Zhan gazed at him, calm and steady as always. "Be careful."

Wei Wuxian watched him leave with a sinking feeling deep in his stomach. Would they meet again?

* * *

Wen Ning came up from the caverns to help him collapse the tunnel. They started from the blood pool room and destroyed several hundred paces of tunnel, one blasting spell at a time. Then they built a crude wall of stone. Around them, fungi were already growing on every bit of dirt, stretching up from the cracks and reaching towards the light from the array.

"You'll see him again, young master," Wen Ning said hesitantly. "There must be other ways up to the surface. We'll find a path."

Wei Wuxian's hand drifted down to the pouch at his side, the tiger seal safe within. "Or make one." But it would have to be far enough away that greedy Jin Guangshan wouldn't find it.

Wen Qing had set to work drawing out a map of the cavern when they returned, and sat them both down and asked many questions about the path they'd taken, the creatures they'd seen, the waterfall and the river. All of their comments went on the paper, neat little characters crammed in around the edges, until at last Wen Qing sighed and put her inkbrush down.

"Well, it can't be any worse than the surface."

When Wei Wuxian went to the tunnel mouth that looked out over the great cavern, he found that the others had already walled off most of it, leaving a single gap barely wide enough to squeeze past. On the other side, Wen Ning's ramp stretched down into the darkness. Wei Wuxian lifted his lantern and descended.

At the base of the ramp, hidden from above by enormous mushroom caps, Fourth Uncle and Zao-jie were busy gathering mushrooms in massive baskets. As Wei Wuxian neared, Fourth Uncle looked up and waved him over.

"We won't run out of food," Fourth Uncle said with excitement. "There's the cave grain and mushrooms all over! As long as we can come down to forage regularly, and to fetch water, we'll be well fed."

A scream came from not far away.

Water. Crocodiles. "Oh no," Wei Wuxian breathed, and ran.

Granny was sprawled out on the bank of the lake, her skirts torn and dashed with mud. A wide furrow led from the bank next to her into the water.

"There's something in there." She pointed to the waterfall. "A big lizard came out of the water, and then something stretched out from behind the water and took it and _ate_ it. I could hear the chewing."

Wei Wuxian blinked. Something bigger than a crocodile? He eyed the track the crocodile had left—much bigger.

"It saved my life," Granny went on, and bowed to the water. "Thank you, whatever you are."

A low rumble came from the waterfall. Wei Wuxian and Granny exchanged a look and quickly fled.

After that, Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning were the only ones who could go to the river and fetch water—a marked inconvenience, but better than anyone being eaten. The crocodiles were obviously harder to notice in the water than one might expect of such a massive clambering lizard.

"Perhaps a bucket on a rope," Wen Qing said as she surveyed the area from a safe distance.

"I could dig a hole in the ceiling?" Wen Ning offered hesitantly. "And dig a secure tunnel back to the living quarters so that the others can fetch water without more monsters."

Wen Qing nodded, and soon it was done.

It took a week to wall off a section of the caverns all the way to the roof, to keep the monsters out—Wei Wuxian kept a close eye out as the others worked, in case another massive spider wandered in. But the only animals that came near were huge, placid grazing beasts with thick manes and sightless eyes that chewed mushrooms and tramped on through the darkness.

Fourth Uncle eyed them every time they came near. "Imagine the plow that creature could pull."

Wei Wuxian looked at the little section of cavern they had blocked off. "Do we need the help?" He could probably capture one, with a little work.

Fourth Uncle shook his head. "The soil here is remarkably fertile. We should easily be able to feed ourselves with a few dedicated fields."

The food had gotten remarkably better upon moving into the caverns; wild fungi grew everywhere, and Fourth Uncle's foraging led to massive baskets of mushrooms that Granny had patiently strung up to dry on line made from the curly pig-tail reeds. Zao-jie had even pounded up the cave grain and made steamed buns, filled thick with chewy mushrooms and nuts and flavored with leaves. Day by day, the Wen remnants grew fatter and more cheerful.

On the day Zao-jie set up a hanging loom to begin weaving reed thread into cloth for new garments, Wen Qing took Wei Wuxian aside. "Our food supply is secure, and we're walled off from the monsters outside. It's time to begin thinking about our goals here."

Wei Wuxian nodded, although he was not quite sure what she was getting at.

"We need to memorialize everyone who's died here, if we can," Wen Qing went on, like it would be that easy! "That's what I need you for. Please, come up with a way to learn their names." She patted him on the arm and smiled. "You're brilliant. I know you can do this."

No amount of flattery would make that task easy! Wei Wuxian retreated to sulk and consider how it might be done.

Well. He _was_ a genius, and his particular brand of cultivation was uniquely suited to the problem. He snuck out of the little walled-off Wen garden, taking down just enough of the wall to escape and then replacing it from the other side. Then he climbed the hill to the top of the waterfall. There were no crocodiles on this side; the river was shallow and clear, with ghostly white fish darting between the rocks. He jumped across to a boulder conveniently jutting out from the water just at the edge and sat, then lifted Chenqing to his lips and began to play.

The settlement had not, thus far, been troubled by ghosts, but Wei Wuxian had seen squads of ghostly soldiers drilling in the woods on his previous visit, those long three months after Wen Chao had thrown him into the Burial Mounds to die. Perhaps they had better things to do than harass the living, but—it was more likely they simply hadn't noticed yet.

The spiritual energy in the great cavern was peaceful, quiet even. Wei Wuxian opened his eyes. He would have to go aboveground to confront the unquiet dead and learn their names.

Beside him, Wen Ning sat on the rock, quietly watching.

"When did you get here?"

"You shouldn't go out alone, young master."

Wei Wuxian shrugged, then wet his finger and—yes, a breeze. "Let's go find another route up to the surface. Your sister has given me a task I can't complete here."

They followed the gently sloping curve of the rift for about two li until it split into a maze of twisting tunnels that all looked alike. Wei Wuxian took his compass out of his pocket; traces of resentful energy would surely point to the surface. After some spinning, it steadied, leading away from the rift and into the maze. The breeze blew in their face as they curved around one pillar of stone after the next, whistling past and bringing the smell of rain. And then one pillar had begun to crumble, leaving a ramp that led up, up, up into the dark, a passage barely wide enough for one man to squeeze through—

Light.

Wei Wuxian blinked up through his fingers, shielding his face from the brightness. The tunnel met the surface at one cracked end of a ravine, and a storm was blowing in.

That was much easier than he'd expected. Was there an entire cavern network beneath the surface of the earth, riddling the mountain with holes? It appeared so. They still hadn't explored the rest of the great cavern, or the other tunnels leading away from it.

Wen Ning came up beside him, his face stretching into a wide smile. "We made it!"

Wei Wuxian looked down at the compass in his hand. Now, he needed a ghost.

* * *

First, a ghost; then, the Summoning of Paper Eyes to call a ghost into a paper doll. Once it was done, Wei Wuxian pinned the doll with a single fingertip and sank into Empathy. Wen Ning knelt at his side holding a bell, ready to break the trance if it became necessary.

_His name was Wan Lei, and he had been a footsoldier in the service of Cao Ren. When the draft proclamation came to their village, his mother had dressed him in his father's armor and given him his father's sword and sent him off to war. He had fought. He had died. And now, he was trapped here, doomed to drill with his companions and suffer an eternity without rebirth._

"Wan as the quantity, Lei as sincerity," Wei Wuxian whispered as he returned to consciousness. He traced the letters on the paper as the spirit departed. "May he find his way to the bridge of forgetfulness."

"Do you think the land will cease to be cursed if we can send all the spirits on?"

Wei Wuxian squinted up at the sky and shook his head. "Nothing will grow here, life has been twisted into death. That said…" He patted Wen Ning on the shoulder. "It should help, at least."

* * *

They returned to Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian made his report. One of the older men, Lao Zhou, had already begun carving memorial tablets out of soft marble. Wei Wuxian watched him shape the characters of the spirit's name, then painted them indigo himself. He set the tablet up against the wall and lit a single stick of incense.

"Good work," Wen Qing said as she knelt beside him.

"There's thousands of ghosts," Wei Wuxian said. "Uncountably many."

"Then we may as well get started. We'll need a temple for them all, though."

"In the cavern?"

Wen Qing shook her head. "We don't have room in the living quarters for a memorial to the dead; we barely have enough room for ourselves. The monsters won't disturb a building with no living creatures in it, though."

"Are you planning on _using_ this temple? For the Ghost Festival, at least? It will be dangerous…"

"You and A-Ning can escort me," Wen Qing said firmly. "The others don't have to come."

Wei Wuxian sighed. Then he told her about the ravine, and the tunnel that led there.

"What about the forest of pillars you traveled through? Lao Zhou could carve the names into the very rock."

Wei Wuxian laughed as he thought of the Lan sect and their massive tablet of rules. "That would work," he admitted. "Wen Ning and I can keep watch and drive off any monsters."

And so it was done.

* * *

Over the next few months, the entire Wen camp came together to transform the maze of twisty tunnels that all looked alike into a maze of smooth stone pillars carved with names and inset with niches for incense and offerings. Wen Qing and Zao-jie hung ribbons and talismans and little paper lanterns, enchanted to glow perpetually. Wei Wuxian raised his eyebrows every time he left and returned to new decorations—tiny statues carved from mushroom wood, pigtail banners bleached ivory and embroidered with various shades of indigo thread, even hammered metal incense burners and offering dishes. But when he asked who had made these things, Wen Qing only smiled down into her carefully annotated list of ghosts.

Meanwhile, the cavern was beginning to feel like a home. Everyone had new clothes, carefully stitched from soft pigtail cloth, and plenty of food. Wei Wuxian quickly stopped Fourth Uncle when he suggested trapping game in the wild part of the caverns, however; evidence suggested the dead did not reanimate so far underground, but it was better to be careful. And as time passed, days upon end, and life went on, he felt the seed of loneliness in his heart, that longing for shijie and Lan Zhan and even sour-faced Jiang Cheng, take root and grow deep.

"Go," Wen Qing told him. "We'll be careful here." She smiled at the look of frustration on his face. "Jin sect wants you dead, and they certainly have spies in Yiling, but they won't be looking for you in Gusu. You can at least go and see Hanguang-jun."

So Wei Wuxian packed himself a sack of food—chewy mushroom strips, steamed dried grain easily reconstituted into porridge with a little water, fermented sweet pods, and a jug of Fourth Uncle's latest experiments into brewing liquor—and set out for Gusu.

And then he ran right into Jiang Cheng in the forest on the other side of Yiling.

"I knew you weren't dead!" Jiang Cheng had still not mastered the fine art of keeping his voice down, Wei Wuxian noted. "You missed Jin Ling's one month ceremony."

Wei Wuxian rubbed at his chest where Jiang Cheng had poked at him. "Dead men don't go to ceremonies! Besides, it's hard to tell time underground."

"Excuses, excuses," Jiang Cheng sneered, but Wei Wuxian brightened as he spoke—had his foster brother actually _missed_ him? "Stay away from cities. No one knows what's happening within the Jin sect, not even a-jie, but they have spies everywhere. If you're going to keep up this farce of being dead, you can't just stroll around spinning your flute in hopes no one will notice."

Wei Wuxian rolled his eyes, but as he continued on his journey, he took Jiang Cheng's advice. The beasts in the forest were more honest than men, and he had no desire to feed the gossips further.

Besides, maybe Lan Zhan could help him find a way into Lanling to see shijie.

Gusu was the same as always. He snuck into Lan Zhan's house and was rewarded by a brief twitch that might have been an expression on anyone else.

"What are you doing here?" Lan Zhan asked.

Wei Wuxian spread his arms wide. "Visiting you!" He pulled Fourth Uncle's jug from his qiankun pouch. "Care to try questionable cave liquor with me?"

So of course, Lan Xichen came knocking at the door of the jingshi while they were both inexcusably drunk; Wei Wuxian wasn't sure what Fourth Uncle had done to make his concoction so strong, but apparently it had involved a fire and a system of intricate metal tubing and had resulted in a lightweight liquid fully capable of giving the imbiber a kick to the head like a mule.

"Wangji?" Lan Xichen pushed the door open. "Young master Wei?"

"I'm not here!" Wei Wuxian called out from his comfortable sprawl on the floor. Lan Zhan was snoring. "I'm dead."

"If you say so," Lan Xichen said. "How long have you been here?"

Wei Wuxian squinted up at the ceiling. "I arrived just after sunset."

"A-Yao's just brought word; there's been an accident in Lanling." Lan Xichen paused. "Jin Zixuan did not survive."

Wei Wuxian took a deep breath. "Shijie?"

"Both the elder and younger Madam Jin are well, so far as I know," Lan Xichen said. "What's happened to Wangji?"

"Cave liquor," Wei Wuxian muttered as he crawled over and shook at Lan Zhan's robes. "Wake up, Lan Zhan, your brother's here."

Lan Zhan still had his cultivation intact, so for _him_ becoming sober only took a moment of concentration. Wei Wuxian tried not to be jealous. "What's happened?"

Lan Xichen repeated himself, adding, "I'm going to Lanling with A-Yao. Wangji, you will need to watch the others until I return."

"Why is everyone so suspicious these days?" Wei Wuxian stretched. "Jiang Cheng babbled something about _spies_ , if you can believe it."

"No one saw you come here?" Lan Xichen asked. Wei Wuxian shook his head. "Good. Let no one see you leave." He nodded, and was gone.

What a terrible interruption to end a wonderful evening of debauchery—and shijie was a widow now. Wei Wuxian shied away from that thought before he could go too far down dark paths.

"I should go and check on her," he murmured.

"I will visit on your behalf," Lan Wangji told him. "Go back to the Burial Mounds. Be careful. Stay apart from others. Let no one know where you pass."

* * *

Wei Wuxian did his best, although he did forage a few meals from unattended orchards along the way. Dongting Lake was thick with lotus pods, and he put several in his bag before returning to the Burial Mounds, and the sharp jagged ravine, and the tunnel. (And if some shadowy figure had followed him there, carefully marking the location of the entry and returning to their master, Wei Wuxian certainly didn't notice.)

After days spent in light aboveground, with even the nights lit by a bright river of stars, absolute darkness was disconcerting. But the path was clear, and Wei Wuxian followed it down, past the maze of memorials, past the waterfall, back to the neat stone wall that demarcated the Wen clan's compound from the wild region of the cavern.

"Young master?" Wen Ning stood guard by—was that a stone drawbridge? Wei Wuxian walked around its perimeter. Yes, definitely stone.

"Fourth Uncle said it would keep the creatures out," Wen Ning explained. "What's happened? Is something wrong?"

Wei Wuxian took a deep breath, then shook his head. "Nothing to do with us."

He told Wen Qing the whole story, of course. After she'd finished with her questions, her eyes were wise and sorrowful as she said, "This was very sudden. Is there anything you need of me?"

Wei Wuxian had thought about it many times as he returned, but—"No. I'm no longer a member of Jiang sect."

Wen Qing pursed her lips but let it pass.

The Wen clan continued their lives as they had before Wei Wuxian had left—food, crafts, with every sleeping cycle bringing new comforts. Wei Wuxian returned to quizzing ghosts on the surface. The ravine was quiet, with no strange beasts to be seen, and as he drew another Summoning of Painted Eyes on yet another talisman, he wondered: was their work pacifying the resentful energy buried within the land itself? His own senses suggested that it was not; the ghosts were calming, but the malice buried in the earth—in the eyes of the skeletal animals, in the bark of the dead trees and stems of the dead grass, in the energies he could distantly feel swirling about the yin iron at his side—remained undiminished.

It felt like something was… waiting.

There were thousands of ghosts yet to lay to rest, and nothing better to do. Wei Wuxian bent his head and set to work in the eerie quiet.

And then one day, the quiet ceased with the howl of an unquiet ghost. It ripped through the floor of the kitchens and through Zao-jie's chest, plucking the life from her with the ease of a farmer killing a chicken for dinner, and went for Granny next.

Wei Wuxian's hand touched the yin tiger seal, and with a thought he restrained it.

"She's alive," Wen Qing said as she looked up from Zao-jie's still form. "Barely."

Wei Wuxian peered at the ghost, reaching out—Wan Lei? What could have happened to him to turn him into this murderous—

"The memorials," Wei Wuxian breathed, as a great howl came up from the caverns.

He rushed through the drawbridge, Wen Ning and Wen Qing following behind, and up the hill towards the memorials to the dead. In the river, long leathery snouts raised up and beady eyes watched them go. At the top of the hill stood an army of cultivators wearing gold and white, their swords glowing with eerie light, and Jin Zixun at their head, standing by the banks of the magma pool.

"He must have thrown Wan Lei's tablet in the magma," Wei Wuxian murmured.

Wen Qing nodded and set her jaw as Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning flanked her. "What brings you here?"

"Revenge!" Jin Zixun screamed, and tore his shirt open. Beneath were weeping sores—the Hundred Holes Curse. "Destroy their unholy pillars!" he ordered his subordinates, and they went.

Wen Qing's eyes widened with horror. A single murderous ghost had nearly killed Zao-jie; what would happen with hundreds or thousands loosed upon the settlement? "Stop them!"

Wen Ning lept after the cultivators who had begun attacking the memorial cenotaphs, while Wei Wuxian went after Jin Zixun. The man fought as if possessed, spewing filth about not only Wei Wuxian but Jiang sect, Wen Qing, even shijie—

It was a pity his footing was not good. Again and again he struck and Wei Wuxian blocked, round and round the edges of the magma pool.

A cracking sound, then a great long boom, as if a pillar of rock had fallen. Hundreds of murderous ghosts flooded out of the ground, converging on Jin Zixun and dragging him down into the bubbling, molten rock.

Wei Wuxian grasped the yin tiger seal, but it was too late. No one could survive that horrific submersion. He could, however, command the angry ghosts, and so he did, all the way up the tunnel, driving the Jin cultivators before him.

"And _stay out_ ," he yelled as they fled.

"I'm sorry, jiejie, young master," Wen Ning said. "I couldn't stop them." Beside him, Wen Qing stood still, holding a cloth to a wound on her forehead.

"Jin Zixun earned his fate," Wen Qing said, and looked to Wei Wuxian. "Can you keep the ghosts still while Lao Zhou carves their names again?"

"Yes, but I can't do that and perform Empathy at the same time," Wei Wuxian told her. "I have no idea who they are, or what names to carve."

Wen Qing smiled, sharp and knowing. "That's all right. I have very good records."

* * *

Lao Zhou worked a full day smoothing and carving another pillar to replace the one that had fallen. Wan Lei's name went on the new pillar as well; separate tablets were much easier to destroy, so there was no reason to make more of them when group memorials would do. Zao-jie and Granny tidied up the area around the pillars, with A-Yuan 'helping', and soon enough the tunnels of memorial pillars, if not quite as serene as they had been before the attack, had sufficiently recovered to return the angry ghosts to a more peaceful state.

"We'll have more company soon," Wen Qing warned as Wei Wuxian ate his mushroom congee the next day.

Wei Wuxian nodded. He knew their peaceful time of building had come to an end—the Jin sect would surely blame the last of the Wen clan for their heir's death, even though he had brought it on himself. "Who cast the Hundred Holes Curse, I wonder," he murmured as he stood watch.

He kept watch over the tunnel, switching off with Wen Ning, for several days, until the sound of footsteps came from the tunnel in the distances—many footsteps. Wei Wuxian retreated to stand at the top of the hill and watched as troop after troop of cultivators came through the tunnels: Jin sect, of course, with Jin Guangshan furiously leading and Jin Guangyao by his side, but also Lan sect, with Lan Xichen and Lan Zhan both, and Jiang sect (Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes at Wei Wuxian in a brief moment of shared irritation), and last of all, Nie sect and Nie Mingjue, tromping in to take the fourth place.

Wen Qing slowly walked up the hillside, Wen Ning at her side, and took her place by Wei Wuxian. "What is it that you want here?" she called out.

"Vengeance for my son!" Jin Guangshan yelled.

"Your son unleashed a plague of ghosts by destroying their monuments, and he was pulled into the magma by them," Wei Wuxian said. "His death was his own doing."

"Lies!" Jin Guangshan launched into a long, dreary speech. Wei Wuxian yawned. He felt a sudden nostalgia for Lan Qiren's lectures; at least there were pieces worth learning there.

The Jin sect, of course, looked out for blood; Jiang and Lan, sceptical and unlikely to attack unless attacked first; and Nie… Wei Wuxian wasn't sure what Nie Mingjue would do. He didn't look too impressed by Jin Guangshan's long speech, at least.

The waterfall rumbled, and A-Yuan screamed. Wei Wuxian, Wen Qing, and Wen Ning all turned and saw—

"That's what's been eating the crocodiles?" Wen Qing said with disbelief.

A dragon's head crested up over the waterfall, dark and enormous. A-Yuan was clinging to one of its whiskers, dangling in midair. **_YOU ARE CULTIVATORS,_** the dragon said. **_YOUR PURPOSE IS TO PURIFY RESENTMENT AND RETURN THE DEAD TO THE CYCLE OF REBIRTH. FOR A THOUSAND YEARS, YOU HUMANS HAVE FORGOTTEN YOUR PURPOSE. YOU SHOULD ALL BE ASHAMED._**

Everyone was kneeling by now. Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian exchanged a look. They'd been working hard, did that mean—

 ** _EXCEPT FOR THESE 'WEN' PEOPLE. THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO HAVE BEEN DOING THEIR_** ** _JOB_** ** _._** The dragon snorted, and A-Yuan giggled as he swung from the dragon's great long whisker. **_NOW GO AWAY AND LET THEM CONTINUE._**

As the humans rose, Nie Mingjue grabbed Jin Guangshan's arm and dragged him off towards the tunnel to the surface, muttering furiously. The Jin and Nie sect cultivators followed. Lan Zhan gave Wei Wuxian a nod as the Lan sect departed, and Lan Xichen had a little smile on his face.

Jiang Cheng looked up at the dragon, then down at Wei Wuxian. His mouth opened and closed several times, and finally he managed to say: "I can't believe you!"

Wei Wuxian laughed. "I don't know what to say?"

"You're ridiculous. A-jie sent you a letter." Jiang Cheng pulled it from his sleeve, placed it on the moss, and then led the Jiang sect off to follow the others to the surface.

Wei Wuxian looked at Wen Qing, and then they both turned to look up at the dragon, who was watching everything with—boredom? Did dragons _get_ bored?

"Great dragon," Wen Qing said as she knelt and kowtowed, Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning following her example, "how may we serve you?"

The dragon's claw gently placed A-Yuan on the moss before Wen Qing. **_I BELIEVE THIS IS YOURS._**

"Jiejie!" A-Yuan clung to Wen Qing's skirts. And when they looked up, the dragon was gone.

Wen Qing looked to Wei Wuxian, and in unison they said: "I think we're going to need another temple."

* * *

The other sects didn't bother the Wen clan deep in their caves after that, and when Wei Wuxian snuck into Lanling to see shijie, she clung to him and sobbed with joy.

The next spring, Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning took great sacks of mushrooms down to Yiling and sold the entire lot for a ridiculously high price. Lan Zhan met them there and bought A-Yuan a paper toy shaped like a dragon; the story had spread, and grown in the telling.

And all was well.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Anecdotalist and Demitas for beta reading! Any remaining errors are entirely my own.


End file.
